Saturday, June 12, 2010

Lumby June 12

It was light winds and cloudbase in the back ranges was going to be high, so we had high hopes for a nice XC. Original plans were for a possible flight to Revelstoke but once in the air it felt a bit stable for the initial flight to Mabel lake (low hills for the first part) and the higher and more unstable peaks once up there. So instead Kevin, Alex, and I flew east to Rawlings cliffs where Kevin and I were able to find a weak climb which Alex missed and ended up landing.

Al joined us and to the Camel's hump, and onwards towards Cherryville but it was too stable in the main valley and Al and I ended up landing in Bear Valley. Kevin turned around and flew back to the Airpark.

The hitch-hike retrieve turned into a ride back to Cooper's launch (!) as the guy wanted to see us fly again, and wanted an excuse to get away from the wife and newborn infant :) So back up to Cooper's he drove us. Blowing down with the occasional up-cycle (it was 4pm by now) so launched lickidy-split and had another good flight to 2300m this time.

People were at Saddle so I flew over there and it looked like lame launching conditions so I was glad to have launched off Cooper's again (even though it was really late in the day for that site). Later on we heard that Glenn had dared to do what we had all talked about and actually flew to Revelstoke. It sounded a bit hairy with long glides out to no LZ's (Mabel lake is very high and the beaches are gone, leaving only cutblocks up in the alpine). But a good job Glenn!